Tornado lead the series 6-5 after the first 60 minutes / Tornado féiert d’Serie 6-5 no den éischten 60 Minutten.

Another exciting hockey night was offered to numerous hockey fans in Luxembourg when Tornado beat Toulon with 6-5 after a tight battle.

Tornado came to the game with a full roster of 20 players. That’s of course a good thing and gives options to coach Fical but it’s not so easy for the players, especially when there are power plays and penalty killings and some players need wait their turn to get on the ice for a long time. In those situations it can be hard to keep the game rhythm. While Tornado had a full roster, Toulon came to Luxembourg with only 12 players.

As Vesa Hirvonen said in Liam McEvoy’s interview, playoff-world is interesting as in each round there is a new team which we don’t know from before, so it normally takes some time to adapt to the game.

So it was this time as well and the start of the game was a bit nervous. Maybe because of the long bus ride and a small roster, Toulon tried to kill the tempo. That also made it hard for theå big Tornado roster to get into the game.

It was Toulon who got the first mark to the game sheet. After 6 minutes of play Toulon's best scorer, Morgan Pagni scored the game opener. Luckily, just two minutes later Vesa Hirvonen sent a lateral pass from the corner to the net and Sacha Backes, who is playing an amazing comeback season, did what goal scorers should do: drive to the net, keep your blade on the ice and you’ll have your name in the game sheet. 1-1.

One and a half minute later, Toulon had a shot from distance which bounced luckily in Toulon's favour into Tornado’s net and the game was 2-1 to Toulon. At this point, Tornados was in a bit of a trouble. Henri Öörni had got injured, which messed up the lines, and coach Fical was planning to change goalie but as the referees didn’t see it and started the game, Gilles Mangen had to turn back to the net, bottle in his glove. Now later it’s easy to say that this maybe was the turning point for Gilles who is playing his last season. This probably gave him a motivation boost as after this he was like a wall in the net.

Tornado managed to keep this score until the break where they had a chance to set up the lines again. During the break the team discussed that it can beat Toulon with skating, as Toulon tried to keep the tempo low and we had a bigger roster.

That plan worked and in the beginning of the period we saw a very strong Tornado team. After 5 minutes of playing, Ossi Uotila, who had recovered from the injury he had in the last regular season game, tied up the game. Then in the middle of the game there was crazy 3 minutes where Tornado first scored 3 goals by Shorty Müller, Ossi Uotila and Marcus Eriksson and then after that, Toulon’s Pagni scored two goals and the game was suddenly 5-4 for Tornado. It’s a pity that Tornado could not keep that 3 goals lead as they maybe get over confident which led to few accidents in the own end. Second period ended with these numbers.

In the third period Tornado took back 2 goal lead when Uotila sealed his hattrick. That lead lasted for 3 minutes until Toulon managed to score their 5th goal. That was the last goal of the game and the series is 6-5 to Tornado.

The second game will be played on 23rd of March in Marseille as Toulon don’t have their own ice rink at the moment. This game gave lot of confidence for Tornado. We noticed that Toulon is beatable and especially with strong skating, like what Jusse Lampsijärvi showed in this game, we can beat them. Also another good thing is that we will get our key players, Colm Cannon and Jonas Mullo back to the roster so we should have the best possible squad in Marseille.

The atmosphere in Kockelscheuer was again so amazing that the team is eager to have another home game on the third round and also give Gilles Mangen and Ronny Scheier, who are playing their last season, one more chance to play in front of the home crowd.

Thanks for coming, thanks for cheering. This #playoffspring has been a blast and it continues!